By Blade Clarke, Justice Hatcher, Lucas Gonzalez, Elizabeth Balogun
Coach K -The Coach
Michael William Krzyzewski is known in any conversation from Durham, North Carolina to Beijing, China, in any news article, and in any SportsCenter debate as “Coach K”.His entire being is defined by that word “coach” and he is most known for his prowess as a leader and genius in the sport of basketball. This could be by intention or maybe not, but regardless it is this focus that paints Mike Krzyzewski in such a positive light. Nobody can argue with success, especially the objective success that we can see in the avenue of sports. 5 National Championships, 13 Final Fours, and 15 ACC championships is success unparalleled in the modern game. His accomplishments go on: most wins in Division I college basketball history (1,202 (!) -over 200 wins more than the next best), 101 tournament wins, most lottery picks coached (28), 6 gold medals, no matter how you look at it, the greatness is unmatched. But how was he this successful? Was he the product of superior talent? Was he a master in the X’s and O’s? The answer falls somewhere in the middle and has been the topic is scrutiny and debate, as would be expected regarding a figure at the top of their respective field for over 30 years.
Mike Krzyzewski was a Chicago kid and fell in love with basketball at a young age. Chicago is known for its hoop’s scene, and this was true in the 1960s as well. A young Mike would play basketball whenever he could, often outside with friends or any opponent he could find to flex his point guard abilities and basketball IQ. He was a leader on the court from a young age, organizing squads and being a player/coach. He was in fact quite talented at the sport although not overly tall or athletic. Standing at around 5’10”, he led the Catholic League in scoring for two years in his high school playing days for Archbishop Weber High. This garnered the attention of Bob Knight, who at that time was coaching atArmy West Point. Knight, who would later become a storied coach, brought Krzyzewski to West Point where he would not quite match the success he had in high school. He would average around 6 points per game during his collegiate career, however, was named a captain for his Senior year which ended with a 4th place finish in the NIT. His playing career would end here, and even though he was not near an NBA level talent, he exhibited his leadership and basketball IQ in his captaincy and quality play.
Krzyzewski's relationship with Bobby Knight was his entry card into the coaching world, as after coaching service teams and the army prep school while in the Army, Knight brought him to Indiana as a graduate assistant coach. He would then return to Army as the head coach after one year at Indiana and lead them to some moderate success that included a record of 73-59 and an NIT appearance. It was in 1980 that came his big moment -being named as Head Coach at Duke University. It should be noted and may be further discussed the impact that Mr. Krzyzewski’s race had in his quick rise in the coaching ranks. The perception of his play fit the mold of the “cerebral white point guard” who is often give the title “Coach on the Court”. This likely played a role in fostering his connections that gave him the quick opportunity to head coach a power five team. This is not to say that Michael Krzyzewski came from wealth and status -his Polish ancestry and immigrant parents taught him hard work and did not provide a golden spoon in the slightest.
Success at Duke was not instant as the team Coach K was left behind was devoid of much talent. It took until 1984 for the team to truly turn around after a 21-34 record in the two years prior, as the strong recruits he brought in 1983 grew into their potential leading Duke to a 24-10 record. There was no looking back after this, as Duke would rattle off 11 straight 20-win seasons, make their first final four in 1988, and win their first championship in 1991. During that span, his basketball great greatness was cemented as he led Duke 5 consecutive Final Four appearances in addition to the back-to-back championships in 1991 and 1992. The team success would continue for decades to come, with 3 more championships in 2001, 2010, and 2015. This success would lead to plenty of NBA interest, first from the Celtics after the 1990 season. This NBA interest would continue over the years, with the Lakers even offering $9 Million per year and part ownership in 2004 and the Nets offering $12-15 Million per year in 2010. Each time Coach K would choose to return to Duke. The real reasons were always somewhat unknown -maybe he enjoyed the total control and power he was able to have at Duke or enjoyed the recruiting and relationship building college basketball required. The reason he always gave was that he was able to satisfy his coaching of professionals during his time as the coach of USA Basketball.
Coach K’s Team USA success is very well known. He has coached the best of the best (Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Carmelo Anthony just to name a few) and the secret to his greatness is the reason for his international success. Coach K’s flexibility and ability to mold gameplan and team play around his players make him successful with the best players who had little time for practice and little chemistry. This allowed him to have success with super skilled yet inexperienced college players who may not be on the team for more than two years. He does not have a set “system” other than playing hard defense and capitalizing on matchups and team strengths. We have seen this time and time again, and a Coach K coached team can play completely differently year by year, style and system wise. This is what set him apart from other Coaches (Jim Boeheim for example) and what has made him beloved by his players. It also helps Coach K get the most out of his players and explains why he recruits so well as it is very appealing to have your unique skillset used to its fullest in front of NBA scouts.
Coach K ended his career in Coach K fashion, coaching a team led by freshman and sophomores to a final four run, building the team around the players’ respective strengths without worrying too much about sets and plays. Looking back on his career, his success helped build the brand of Duke, but the success never really translated into local fanhood. There are tons of fans from around country that like the Instagram posts and attend nationally televised games at MSG, but when you ask 10 people from Durham what college team they root for, the majority will tell you UNC, NC State, or NCCU. Duke has played Central multiple times in the past decade and a half, but it often comes off as a charitable endeavor. He may paint it as giving exposure to HBCUs, but in reality, it is condescending when he poses for pictures after a 50-point victory. He offers little other support but does often speak publicly on his respect for their coach. Duke and NCCU have history on the court, with a 1944 match between the all-white Duke team and all black Central team being a momentous event when it came to integration in sport. Another pressing question that we all should ask is regarding the recruitment of black athletes to traditionally white schools like Duke over HBCUs like Central. Is that in their best interests? Coach K would say so.
Money Talks: The Salary of Coach Mike Krzyzewski
If you want to know the perception of a thing, you look at how much it costs. In the workplace, this concept looks like salary. Although it is perhaps crude to consider a relationship between personal worth and pay, it is undeniable that compensation is a way in which an employer communicates value or appreciation to their employee. In the case of college athletics, universities seem to really appreciate their coaches. Coaches' salaries sit between $2 to $6 million, while the academic employees—the supposed focus of the institution—are lucky to break $500,000. Why? What exactly are universities paying for when they hand over these millions? At Duke University with famed basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski (affectionately known as "Coach K"), the return of upwards of $7 million is Duke's image.
In 1980, Coach K was offered the job for $40,000. It's fair to say that the university was taking a chance on him. He'd just left a less-than-stellar season at the Army and, in fact, was almost passed over for Bob Wenzel, who later coached for Jacksonville and Rutgers. Compared to his 2020 reported compensation of $7.4 million, his 1980 salary is chump change. However, during the 40 years between 1980 and 2020, Coach K became a very different coach. He had 5 NCAA championships under his belt (the only basketball championships Duke has ever won) and was the Division 1 men's basketball's most winningest coach. His impact on Duke basketball is obvious, but his legacy of winning is more than just basketball; it carries over to the campus.
In 2009, Lee Todd Jr., former president at the University of Kentucky, claimed that the winning basketball team led to generous donations for their academic programs. Outside of the court, the school largely benefitted from basketball victories. At Duke, this argument upholds. On Duke University's website, listed on the campus traditions are burning benches after a Duke victory against the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, tenting at Krzyzewski-ville (named after Coach K), and being "Cameron Crazies," a name for the student basketball fans. CollegeVine, a resource to help incoming college freshmen in their admissions journey, also includes dancing to "Everytime We Touch" by Cascada. All of these traditions are related to Duke basketball and started during Coach K's 42-year-long career. His legacy creates the campus culture, which helps to attracts students, attention, and money, all for which he is paid.
This appreciation for basketball, however, doesn't extend to the brunt of the work: the players. Although Coach K is largely responsible for many of Duke's victories, he isn't the one playing the game. That honor goes to the student-athletes, who currently receive $0.00 in official compensation. The absence of an athlete's salary plays a large role in why Coach K's salary can be what it is. The money that would usually have to be split among players and coaches only has to go to a few individuals.
Currently, the solution to this inequity is the NCAA's Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policy, which allows students to benefit from their stardom, but it doesn't require the university to show monetary appreciation to their players, and it doesn't change that Coach Jon Scheyer, who will replace Coach K in the 2022-2023 season, will start his career with millions, based on the work of the players and coaches before him.
Branding the Blue Devils
In the sports world, you don’t often see any one individual’s retirement given the farewell tour treatment, a continuously memorialized final season full of pomp and circumstance. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find many players given that attention, much less a Coach. But even Mike Krzyzewski’s announcement of his retirement one year in advance defies the norm. UNC legend Roy Williams passed the torch to Hubert Davis just at the end of the season last year, and with that, he was gone. K, on the other hand, was just featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which happens to be not his first nor second, but third time adorning the publication’s front page. Everything about the 2021-2022 season was branded as Coach K’s last, whether that be at Duke, whose gift shops are stocked with “1K” merch galore, or within the league in general as the media has marked every one ofK’s milestone’s this seasons, keeping track of all the awards, accolades, and accomplishments that will now define his final tally. No other man in sports has garnered the public image that follows Mike Krzyzewski.
The Duke Basketball brand and Coach K are fully intertwined -neither would exist without the other. Before the K era, Duke had zero national championships, and they weren’t exactly known as a basketball powerhouse. Before he was hired at Duke in 1980, Krzyzewski had spent a few years coaching at Army, but was not a well known coach and made for a relatively obscure pick. 42 years later, Duke is arguably the most recognizable school for college basketball, a status that goes paired with K’s impact on the program. Five national titles, 13 final fours, 15 ACC championships, and 13 ACC regular season titles. A tent city populated by thousands of students every winter dons his name. Other programs have seen similar success, but this spans multiple coaches across different eras of basketball. At Duke, the one constant in the program’s rise is Coach K’s presence: he transformed Duke Basketball into the brand it is today. It’s for this exact reason that the future is so uncertain. Passing the reins to Jon Scheyer is an unprecedented move not just for Duke, but for the sport as a whole.
At 34, Scheyer will be the youngest coach in the ACC, and as a former player under Coach K only a decade ago, his experience is valuably unique but different from Coach K’s. With that, it’s easily understood that the program will evolve and change in the coming years. Scheyer plans to tweak the offensive style of play and will come into his own style of coaching, which will likely stand out as different simply because of how well known K’s style was. His military background shaped his strict, no-nonsense demeanor and intolerance for stupid mistakes. One of Krzyzewski’s most well known characteristics is that he has the mouth of a sailor. JJ Redick recounted sitting behind the bench during this season’s loss to Miami, where he overheard K telling the team “I hate your f——faces. Your f——faces suck,” a frank way of letting his players know that he was not happy with them. Krzyzewski has also had his fair share of heated exchanges and altercations with players, coaches, and officials on the court. Just this season in a January game against Georgia Tech, K shared some choice words with opposing guard Michael Devoe after the player pointed and commented something to him. But even off the court, not everyone is exempt from Coach K’s scorn. In early 2021, K apologized after lashing out at a student reporter who asked what was next for the Devils after a loss at Louisville.But those who know him best understand that “passionate language” is just a part of Coach K’s brutal honesty and doesn’t reflect his character. Other figures might garner more criticism for similar patterns of behavior, but for one as legendary as Coach K, these occurrences are just the small price to pay for the formation and establishment of the Duke Basketball dynasty. He’s still a great coach, and the man’s attention to detail has gotten him compared to Steve Jobs.
The reverence, respect, and notoriety of Mike Krzyzewski is so ingrained in Duke culture that it’s easy to forget that not everybody sees him that way. In particular, those who root against K’s teams don’t always share the same admiration for him. With the constant media coverage of his final season and retirement tour, the world seems to be pretending that Coach K has always been adored, sprinkling him in praise, accolades, and appreciation from every angle. When in reality, he’s represented one of the most loved and hated figures in sports. As Duke is a player in what is undeniably the bitterest rivalry in college sports, it’s impossible to avoid those who are celebrating Coach K’s retirement, particularly the UNC fans giddy that they served him his final loss. There’s plenty of reason to hate Coach K, like all the aforementioned incidents of outbursts, arguments, and spite, but when paired with K’s unmatchable record of success, the disdain only multiplies. For those on the outside, Duke is the evil empire in the world of college basketball. They bring in players like Christian Laettner and Grayson Allen, employ a periodically morose Coach in Krzyzewksi, and they always seem to win. Coach K is the Nick Saban, the Phil Jackson, the Bill Belichik of college basketball, and with his retirement this season, one of the prime topics of discourse has been predicting who will become the sport's next villain. Duke is never the underdog, but K’s absence leaves a power vacuum for someone else to become the object of scorn by all other rival programs.
While K has his haters, he was still the best. And being the best draws a lot of attention. Duke basketball’s optics under Coach K are hard to beat. Just look at the statistics from K’s last season to prove it. As of mid-February, 3 out of 4 of the most viewed college basketball games on ESPN featured Duke. Duke’s Round of 32 game was the most watched of the first weekend of March Madness. The Vegas game against Gonzaga was the most watched regular season game on ESPN since 2019, and it drew the largest basketball crowd in Nevada state history with 20,389 attendees. Duke consistently draws the highest TV audiences, highest in-person attendees, and most social media interactions. The Brotherhood brand is strong by name, but the data only supports this further. Last year, Duke landed an early agreement with marketing giant Nielson, who have worked with the new NIL rules to track national exposure, market impact, and social media engagement. Duke earned an impact score of 344 (from a baseline average of 100) for NIL marketing value, ranking us at number 1 for yet another statistic.
The stats, the accolades, and the glory are nothing new. But with K’s retirement this year, the media has shifted towards taking a look at the man behind the basketball. Cover story after cover story has taken a deep dive in K’s life story. Articles have explained his Catholic upbringing in Chicago, his time at West Point and relationship with Bob Knight, and his deep admiration for his family. The whole Krzyzewski clan have been a central part of his final season, with Coach K’s grandson Michael Savarino earning a scholarship spot on the team and K’s whole family embracing him on the court after his last game in Cameron. With Governor Roy Cooper declaring the state of North Carolina the center of the college basketball universe, rivalry and competition are rampant within the state and its countless programs. But Khas maintained a good relationship with his neighborly coaches throughout the years. Roy Williams has described their relationship as one built on extreme respect for one another, which may explain why there was much pushback after Hubert Davis didn’t honor Coach K’s retirement before the first Duke-UNC game this season. Coach K has also kept up a rapport with NCCU, praising Head Coach LeVelle Moton, although Duke and NCCU haven’t had a preseason matchup in a few years now. Jon Scheyer just hired Elon head coach Mike Schrage, who previously worked at Duke in the 2000s. It’s safe to say that amidst the bitterness of fans, Coach K’s relations in the coaching community were maintained well, and his presence will be missed.